An effluvious bouquet

I have to admit, I’ve never heard of an entire movie devoted to fart-sniffing before. I can’t confess to harboring any interest in it myself, but I’m sure there are some fetish freaks that should find this “biopic” to be fascinating, if not outright porn:

 The actor Jason Segel will play David Foster Wallace in a forthcoming biopic of the author entitled The End of the Tour. Foster Wallace, who committed suicide in 2008, was one of the most talented writers of his generation. The film will be based on an article in Rolling Stone in which journalist David Lipsky (to be played by Jesse Eisenberg) followed Foster Wallace on his book tour round America promoting Infinite Jest, his 1,100-page novel from 1996.

Lipsky’s account was turned into a book in 2010 entitled Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: a Road Trip With David Foster Wallace. The film is scripted by Pulitzer-winning playwright Donald Margulies, and the director is James Ponsoldt.

Actually, David Foster Wallace wasn’t one of the most talented writers of my generation. He was one of the most promising writers of it. He was one of the most ballyhooed writers of it. He was one of the most talked-about writers of it. But he never actually realized any of that promise, and never managed to produce anything more than an inferior John Irving novel writ larger and less coherent.

I am absolutely convinced that the fart-sniffers of New York literary society bear more than a little responsibility for Wallace’s suicide. If they hadn’t put him on such a pedestal so early and undeservedly, he might not have felt like such a failure. Because he was a failure, a complete failure, despite writing a big novel that didn’t completely suck. But it also wasn’t the masterpiece it was expected to be, it wasn’t the masterpiece that some still pretend it to be, and Wallace knew that better than anyone.

Crushing the insects

As he learned from his Mommy, Johnny thinks that if you pretend to embrace an insult, you are totally showing the big meanie that he can’t hurt you. Because if you put on a big enough production, no one will notice that you’re crying yourself to sleep at night.

“The problem is that the ‘vocal minority’ of insects who make up the new generation of writers don’t scramble for the shadows when outside lights shines on them—they bare their pincers and go for the jugular. Maybe it is a good thing that SFWA keeps them locked up. The newer members who Scalzi et al. brought in are an embarrassment to the genre.”
— (name withheld) on SFF.net, during the recent unpleasantness.

Heh heh heh. I realize, of course, that the person who wrote the comment above meant “insect” as an insult. But what do we know about insects? They are numerous, adaptable, highly successful as a class, and, when they put their mind to it, absolutely unstoppable. No wonder this person seems terrified.

As it happens, I have for a long time said that there are three types of writers: dinosaurs, mammals and cockroaches. Dinosaurs are the writers who are tied into an old model of the writing and publishing life, and when that specific model dies, so does the writer’s career. Mammals are the ones who ride the wave of a new writing/publishing model into success and prominence — but if they tie their fortunes to that one model, they’ll find themselves transformed into dinosaurs soon enough. Cockroaches, on the other hand, learn and adapt and thrive in every circumstance, in part because they know that things change. If you’re a writer, being a cockroach is the way to go.

And so, oh! The irony! Of calling writers the thing that (metaphorically) it is awesome to be, careerwise.

For the record (and because it is referring to my time in office, which I can speak about): I am immensely proud to have, along with Mary Robinette Kowal (my VP for two thirds of my administration) and the rest of the board and volunteers, through our efforts on behalf of our membership, helped to bring so many of the writers this person so dismissively refers to as “insects” into SFWA. These writers are talented, opinionated, smart and adaptable, and not coincidentally write some really great things, and were already in my time doing good for the organization. If this person wants to put me at the head of this insect army, I’m delighted to accept the commission (as is Mary! I asked her! She said yes!).

Mary and I are no longer officers of SFWA, but I think our commissions at the head of the Insect Army are still in effect: After all, not every “insect” is in SFWA (yet). And so I say to you: Join John and Mary’s Insect Army! You must write! You must be fearless! You must stand your ground in the face of deeply silly insults, clacking your pincers derisively at them! And, if you believe that every person — writer, “insect” and otherwise — should be treated with the same dignity and honor that you would accord yourself, so much the better. Together we can swarm to make science fiction and fantasy awesome!

Insect is an apt term for them. They are nobodies and no-talents led by mediocrities who have careers by virtue of smoke, mirrors, and being chosen by other mediocrities due to their ideological affiliations. We’re not talking about China Mieville here. We’re not talking about Charles Stross or the late Iain M. Banks, left-wing writers of genuine talent. We’re talking about the nattering nothings. Scalzi is lying when he says: “These writers are talented, opinionated, smart and adaptable, and not coincidentally write some really great things.”

They’re not talented. They’re not smart. Most of them are barely even published. They’re not adaptable, they’re intolerant, and most of them don’t even write as well as the definitively mediocre Scalzi, who produced this award-winning dialogue:


“Man, I owe you a blowjob,” Duvall said.
“What?” Dahl said.
“What?” Hester said.
“Sorry,” Duvall said. “In ground forces, when someone does you a
favor you tell them you owe them a sex act. If it’s a little thing, it’s
a handjob. Medium, blowjob. Big favor, you owe them a fuck. Force of
habit. It’s just an expression.”


“Got it,” Dahl said.


“No actual blowjob forthcoming,” Duvall said. “To be clear”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Dahl said, and turned to Hester. “What about you? You want to owe me a blowjob, too?”
“I’m thinking about it ,” Hester said. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it now takes to win A PARTICIPATION HUGO!

After taking over the SFWA with their bureaucratic swarming thanks to the McCaffrey rule, the insects made the same mistake that all the indebted college students are making today. They think the credentials and the awards matter and they don’t understand that those things were only ever significant because of what they symbolized: SF excellence. A Nebula once meant something. A Hugo once meant something. Now, they’re the reward for meaningless swarmings. The insects mistake the awards for the literary accomplishment.

That’s why the Old Guard’s petition, the Old Guard’s disgust, was so hurtful to them. Because it is an undeniable reminder that the insects cannot live on the stolen glory of their elders and betters.

And now that the gatekeepers don’t matter any longer, now that everyone has equal access to the SF/F readers, we will crush them beneath our iron-shod feet.

As for Mary Puppinette Kowal, the reason she’s a complete nobody is because nobody actually gives a damn what she writes. Nobody reads her except her fellow insects. For all her awards and bureaucratic involvement and being pushed by the biggest genre publisher, her most recent book is ranked #268,486 on Kindle. She’s a nasty little nothing and never-will-be who doesn’t even write SF/F, she writes miscategorized Regency Romance.

Libertarians are not libertarian

Karl Denninger received a letter:

Dear Karl:

I’ll get straight to the point.

Our general fund bank acount is critically low.

Unless we can raise funds immediately, the following may happen:

We may have to withdraw ballot access support from some large states.

We may have to lay off staff.

We may not be able to finance the purchase of our Libertarian Party Headquarters

Wes Benedict
Executive Director 

No wonder the Libertarians nominated presidential candidates who were terrible on the debt issue. They are addicted to credit themselves. Unlike past elections, I didn’t vote Libertarian in 2008 or 2012 because the candidates were Republican retreads who were little more genuinely libertarian than Barack Obama.

Like the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party is run by hacks who are more interested in perks than principles, it’s a micro-Republican Party. The sooner it goes away, the better. In any event, it should be eminently clear that the problems presently faced by the USA cannot and will not be solved by electoral politics.

Enjoy the crash.

Regime change comes to Eastern Europe

I have to admit, I haven’t been paying attention and I have no idea who is even supposed to be “the good guys” in Ukraine:

  • Ukrainian Health Ministry said 88 police, six journalists and four foreigners were among those hospitalised
  • Ukraine’s Interior ministry says 67 police troops have been captured by protesters in Kiev
  • At least 50 people have died in clashes in Kiev that came just days after the crisis in the Ukraine seemed to be over
  • Government snipers were reported to be shooting at some of the protesters in Kiev
  • Protest leaders and president called truce after two days of violent clashes between activists and police
  • President Barack Obama condemned violence, warning ‘there will be consequences’ for Ukraine if it continues
  • President Viktor Yanukovych declared Thursday a day of mourning for the dead
  • Several thousand protesters remained on Independence Square in Kiev and clashed with police on Thursday

It seems bizarre that one side is (allegedly) taking prisoners while the other one is (reportedly) shooting unarmed protesters. But those protesters don’t look particularly unarmed, what with the shotguns and all. And the fact that the Obama administration is pushing the Bush Doctrine of regime change in Europe makes me very suspicious of any attempt to turn the protesters into the good guys after their attempt to whitewash the psychopaths in Syria.

Women Ruin Everything: Academic edition

This open argument in favor of abanoning the Doctrine of Academic Freedom in favor of a Doctrine of Academic Justice is an excellent example of why women were not allowed into the universities in the first place. This is why they were not permitted to vote. We ignore the great minds of the past at our peril, and we have no right to complain about having to suffer the obvious consequences of entirely predictable actions:

In its oft-cited Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the American Association of University Professors declares that “Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results.” In principle, this policy seems sound: It would not do for academics to have their research restricted by the political whims of the moment.

Yet the liberal obsession with “academic freedom” seems a bit misplaced to me. After all, no one ever has “full freedom” in research and publication. Which research proposals receive funding and what papers are accepted for publication are always contingent on political priorities. The words used to articulate a research question can have implications for its outcome. No academic question is ever “free” from political realities. If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of “academic freedom”?

Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of “academic justice.” When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.

The power to enforce academic justice comes from students, faculty, and workers organizing together to make our universities look as we want them to do. Two years ago, when former summer school instructor Subramanian Swamy published hateful commentary about Muslims in India, the Harvard community organized to ensure that he would not return to teach on campus. I consider that sort of organizing both appropriate and commendable. Perhaps it should even be applied more broadly.

Women are, and have always been, intrinsically fascist at heart. With a small minority of exceptions, they hate freedom and will always trade it for the promise of security, physical and emotional. The Fascists understood this. The medieval philosophers understood this. The Founding Fathers understood this. The West rejected the idea in favor of sexual equality and the myth of progress, and now the university has abandoned its centuries-old tradition of academic freedom.

Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, not all women are the same. Yes, there are brilliant and sensible women. But the salient point is that the price of female involvement is reliably too high across the board. How much more destruction can Western Civilization be expected to survive before women of sense are willing to admit that the price of female participation in matters of governance is too great? Do we really need to undergo the Great Collapse before the ancient truths can be accepted once more?

“The lesson, as always, is this: women ruin everything.”
– Bill Simmons

Backfire

In which John C. Wright explains how reading an slanderous anti-Christian short story helped him move on from atheism and embrace Christianity:

Mr. Chiang’s short story, as far as I was concerned, not merely failed of its object, but was counter-productive. One of the things that made me suffer no regret when I was called away from the cramped intellectual jail of atheism into a wider and more wonderful world, was my growing conviction that my fellow atheists were shallow, men without insight into real human nature. I read Chiang’s story and I thought: is this the best my side can do? Is this cheap slander the best argument we can muster against our hated enemies, the Christians? In those days I kept wondering why, since my side had the Sixteen-Inch Guns of Truth and Logic, our gunners kept shooting blanks. Why were we sneering all the time, instead of setting out the evidence?

To get a notion of the depth of the contrast I saw, find a comfy chair by the fire, read HELL IS THE ABSENCE OF GOD by Ted Chiang, and then, without rising from the chair except perhaps to toss another log on the fire, pick up and read SMITH OF WOOTTON MAJOR by J.R.R. Tolkien, or perhaps LEAF BY NIGGLE. It does not matter whether you are an Atheist or a Christian or are another faith or uncommitted: anyone reading those two author’s work in contrast will see that one has an insight into human joys and human woes, a compassion toward even human folly or pride or sloth. And the other one shows nothing, no humanity, no understanding. The heart of Chiang’s work is not in the right place. Even though I thought Chiang’ world view was true and Tolkien’s was false, I concluded Tolkien’s insight into real life was keen-eyed, and Chiang’s was superficial.

He cites an earlier review of Chiang’s short story, written when he was, as he described at the time, “an unrepentant atheist”:

“The satire “Hell is the Absence of God” reads like it was written by someone who never met a Christian, or read anything written by a Christian. In this tale, those who see the light of heaven are grotesquely disfigured (their eyes and eye sockets are removed) and loose free will, and become perfect in faith, so that they are automatically assured of entrance into paradise. The main character, mourning after the death of his wife, seeks to find a spot where an angel is leaving or entering the world, so that he can, if only for a moment, glimpse the light of heaven, so that he can loose his eyes and his free will, but be assured of meeting his wife again in heaven. All goes as planned, but God capriciously sends the man to Hell in any case. Hell is not a place of torment, but a bland area much like earth, merely separate from God, peopled by Fallen Angels who sin was not rebellion, but free-thinking. Hence, out of all created beings, only the main character is actually suffering in Hell, since he is the only one who longs not to be there, and, thanks to his free will being destroyed, is the only one who loves God wholeheartedly. Again, all efforts of the main character to rejoin his wife are futile. There are secondary characters whose lives are also ruined and for no particular reason.

“I myself am an unrepentant atheist, but I would never pen such trite antichristian propaganda. If an author is going to set a story in an alternate universe where the Christian myths happen to be true, the author should become familiar with (or, at least, hide his contempt for) the source material. Read Thomas Aquinas or John Milton. Christians may be wrong, but they are not stupid.

“Over all, Mr. Chiang is an excellent writer, who writes wonderfully about big ideas, but weds them to a theme of dispirited nihilism. He is capable of subtle and penetrating characterization, except when he trots out a tired leftwing cliché, whereupon suddenly everything becomes flat and predictable (see, for example, his treatment of the CIA, Big Business, the Military, and the Victorian Age).”

And so we see that even shadow testifies to the existence of the Light. I thought Wright’s take on Chiang was spot-on. I have the collection of short stories to which he refers, and while I found them intriguing, and even bordering on brilliant, I also thought it was remarkable how every single one of them felt essentially flat. I didn’t know why at the time, but now I do. Put simply, Chiang is a tremendous talent crippled by postmodern secularism.

He is, as I once explained to R. Scott Bakker, a color-blind painter. It makes no difference how flawless his technique and his skill are, because when the sun is green and the grass is purple, there is a certain disconnect from the human experience that cannot be avoided.

As I said to Tom Kratman yesterday, in the end, WHAT you write is considerably more important than HOW you write. An accurate truth, even clumsily described, is more significant than a pretty lie, no matter how eloquently the lie is told.

The bassline thickens

Have we approached the point of statistical unlikelihood yet?

Yet another banker has committed suicide, with a JP Morgan forex trader leaping to his death from the top of the firm’s Chater House headquarters in Hong Kong.

Over the past few weeks at least seven bankers have died under mysterious circumstances, including another JP Morgan senior manager who jumped off the top of a skyscraper in London last month.

Speculation is rife that the series of deaths are connected to some kind of looming financial crisis or a huge legal case targeting bankers for malfeasance, although no definite link has been established.

Not that I’m any fan of bankers, but this is getting a little weird. Especially the suicide by nail gun.

The Age Monster

It gets everyone eventually. We can train, we can eat right, we can think positive thoughts, but every year that passes, the opponents get younger, the pains get sharper, and the effort gets more strenuous.

Yeah, we had our first soccer practice of the year last night.

It actually went surprisingly well, mostly because I’ve been running 40 minutes twice a week over the offseason in preparation for a season at right wing. My side played a man down in the scrimmage, but I was arguably, (no, definitely), the worst player on my side and I was able to shut down the best player on the other side. This is a decided advantage.

I mostly hung back, with occasional sprints forward when the other team wasn’t looking and managed to score our first goal that way. More importantly, it took the new guy, who was, in the immortal words of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 3, “a handful”, a while to learn to respect the lingering remnants of my speed, so he kept trying to blow past me to no avail. And when he switched to trying to use his vastly superior ball skills to fake me out, I simply refused to commit, thereby forcing him to finally pass off after my teammates were already back on defense.

So old age and experience really can overcome youth and skill. And a little treachery combined with upper body strength doesn’t hurt either. After practice was over, the new guy came over and introduced himself. He looked a little surprised to discover that he was 20 years younger. It’s a bit of a backhanded compliment, to be sure, but these days, I’ll take it. It’s certainly better than the alternative.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to win a regular starting position again this year or not, but the initial omens appear to be good. We crushed the other half of the squad despite playing a man down the whole time, so that should help. I know that in our captain’s eyes, reliability tends to trump talent.

Battling the new guy to a draw reminded me of our indoor tournament the week before, which was the most fun I’ve ever had at a soccer tournament. 12 teams were invited, good teams, including all three of our primary rivals. We figured we would probably finish fourth of six in our group, with the possibility of a shot at third. The tournament went until after midnight, with copious beer flowing throughout the course of the evening.

The first game was easy. We won 3-1, but it should have been 6-1. I got the third goal when S picked me out and rifled a pass right to the corner of the goal; I just had to stick out my foot and deflect it in. The second game was my best; it was against the team that has been my personal bete noire, but I got two goals and we put them away 3-1 as well. Then we played our derby game, which was incredibly annoying because despite dominating the ball, we somehow managed to lose 3-2.

So, it looked like third-place group finish was in the cards, and that’s when things got exciting. We destroyed the fourth team 6-0, then watched as they played our neighbors without much hope of them scoring an upset. But their best player was the coach of our first team squad, and he ripped off an early goal from 25 meters that briefly would have put us in second place. Then our neighbors came back and took the 2-1 lead that they held until the last minute. The other team got a goal to tie it with 50 seconds left, but a tie didn’t do us any good since we knew we probably couldn’t beat our arch rivals, who have supplanted us as the league’s dominant team, in the final game.

However, with 11 seconds left, the ball was passed back to the coach, who was nearly the entire length of the indoor field from the goal. He pushed it forward a step, picked his spot, and put it right in the upper corner for the win with three seconds left. Phenomenal shot. The entire gymnasium went nuts. The upset meant that we were guaranteed second place in the group, and first if we could beat our rivals.

Unfortunately, we lost 3-1. But it was a good, hard-fought game, and there was a funny moment after the young Serie B ref, who is a friendly acquaintance of mine, told me before the game that I couldn’t stop him. About halfway through, he had the ball on the left side I was defending, and I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, there was zero chance he was going to pass the ball. Despite my best efforts, he did manage to turn on me, but I kept just enough shoulder on him to force his shot wide of the goal. He laughed, offered a high-five, and decided we could call it a draw as his teammates shouted at him for not passing the ball.

That is precisely what I will miss most about competitive sports when the time finally comes to hang up my soccer boots for the last time. The competition. The physical testing. The going head-to-head to find out who is better. And the mutual respect that so often results from the process. Whether one wins or one loses, it is the battle, not the result, from which the pleasure is derived. I’ve won league and conference championships. I’ve coached a team that never won a single game. But the teams I remember most fondly aren’t necessarily the championship teams, they are the teams that never stopped competing until the final whistle blew, no matter what the score.

The Age Monster will get me in the end. I know that. I accept that. The time will come when the young guys will blow right past me, when their speed and power will be simply too much to handle. But I am going to keep that bastard at bay as long as I can, and I will keep playing as long as I can help my team win.

You can’t stop the signal

But you can delay it. Should have done this yesterday, but better late than never. Amping Larry Correia’s current Book Bomb, Chuck Dixon’s Bad Time series:

Four men. Four Days. For the fight of their lives. It was just a walk
in the desert to a place 100, 000 years in the past. They thought they
knew what to expect but they were wrong. Now a team of scientists is
trapped in a world they were not prepared for and can never return from.
Their only hope lies in quartet of former US Army Rangers willing to
travel to prehistoric Nevada and face unknown horrors and impossible
odds bring them home from Bad Times.

Book 1: Cannibal Gold
Book 2: Blood Red Tide

Is it just me or do those titles have a distinct Glen Cookian sound to them. Chuck Dixon is a comic writer and the creator of Nightwing and Bane; he has now moved into writing novels. Not being a graphic novel guy, this the first I’ve heard of him myself, so I’d welcome any comments from those who have read his books.

Question of the Day: can the books be legitimately classified in the “Space Marine” category when the gentlemen involved are snake eaters?

UPDATE: Take that, Larry! Cannibal Gold had fallen back to #2,123 when this posted. Now it’s up to #1,156. It would be amusing to see it top the #911 that Larry’s readers managed.

Women in combat: a prelude

The Sochi Winter Olympics are providing a useful service in demonstrating the complete absurdity of the woman warrior meme:

Sarka Pancochova, a Czech snowboarder, led the slopestyle event after the first run. On her second trip down the course of obstacles and jumps, she flew through the air, performed a high-arcing, spinning trick and smacked her head upon landing. Her limp body spun like a propeller into the gully between jumps and slid to a stop.

Pancochova was soon on her feet, and the uneasy crowd cheered. Her helmet was cracked nearly in half, back to front. She was one of the lucky ones, seemingly O.K., but her crash last week was indicative of a bigger issue: a messy collage of violent wipeouts at these Olympics. Most of the accidents have occurred at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, the site of the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events like halfpipe, slopestyle and moguls.

And most of the injuries have been sustained by women….

The Winter Games have always had dangerous events. But the Extreme Park,
as the name suggests, is built on the ageless allure of danger. All of
the events there have been added to the Olympic docket since 1992, each a
tantalizing cocktail of grace and peril.But
unlike some of the time-honored sports of risk, including Alpine
skiing, luge and ski jumping, there are few concessions made for women.

For both sexes, the walls of the halfpipe are 22 feet tall. The
slopestyle course has the same tricky rails and the same huge jumps. The
course for ski cross and snowboard cross, a six-person race to the
finish over jumps and around icy banked curves, is the same for men and
women. The jumps for aerials are the same height. The bumps in moguls
play no gender favorites.

“Most
of the courses are built for the big show, for the men,” said Kim
Lamarre of Canada, the bronze medalist in slopestyle skiing, where the
competition was delayed a few times by spectacular falls. “I think they
could do more to make it safer for women.”

Compare
the sports with downhill skiing, in which women have their own course,
one that is shorter and less difficult to navigate. Or luge, in which
female sliders start lower on the track than the men. Or ski jump, in
which women were finally allowed to participate this year, but only on
the smaller of the two hills. The Olympics have a history — sexist,
perhaps — of trying to protect women from the perils of some sports.

But equality reigns at the Extreme Park, even to the possible detriment of the female participants.

Actually, equality doesn’t reign. Because the inferior and uncompetitive female athletes don’t compete against the superior men. But the young women are such stupid herd animals that they will literally kill themselves in their incoherent denial.

“I see it every contest,” Cusson said. “Unless they are forced to hit
the smaller side, the best ones will always go for the bigger jumps.
They want to prove to everybody that they are capable. And then all the
other girls will follow.”

As usual, the end result of feminism is more dead and injured women. If one simply judges by the consequences, it should be obvious that feminists hate women far more passionately than even the most virulent misogynist.

They can’t even compete in competitive leisure pastimes without half-killing themselves and requiring surgery, but they’re going to hold their own in combat, where the enemy is actually trying to harm them?